Former FCC Commissioner Nicholas Johnson now teaches at the University of Iowa College of Law in Iowa City where he is a member of the law school’s Intellectual Property Law and International and Comparative Law faculties. His emphasis is communications and media law (Law of Electronic Media and Cyberspace Law Seminar).
Following law school, where Professor Johnson was Order of the Coif and articles editor of the Texas Law Review, he clerked for U.S. Court of Appeals Judge John R. Brown and U.S. Supreme Court Justice Hugo L. Black. His teaching then began at the University of California Law School (Boalt Hall), Berkeley, emphasizing administrative law. He subsequently was an associate at the Washington, D.C., law firm of Covington & Burling, from which he was appointed by President Lyndon B. Johnson (no relation) to be the U.S. Maritime Administrator. He is perhaps best known for his tumultuous seven-year term as a Commissioner of the Federal Communications Commission (1966-1973), during which among other things he was featured on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine and published How to Talk Back to Your Television Set. He later served President Jimmy Carter as a presidential advisor for the White House Conference on Libraries and Information Services. Professor Johnson has taught at a number of law schools (and communications studies departments), and published widely in law reviews and general publications.
Since his F.C.C. term, Professor Johnson ran for Congress, headed a Washington-based media reform group, hosted a TV program for PBS stations (“New Tech Times”), wrote a nationally syndicated column, and lectured here and internationally. He is a Fellow of the World Academy of Arts and Sciences and has served on a number of non-profits’ boards. He was co-director of the UI’s Institute for Health, Behavior and Environmental Policy, and a member of the school board of the Iowa City Community School District.
He maintains the blog FromDC2Iowa.blogspot.com and Web site www.nicholasjohnson.org (with links to 300-plus-page bibliography of writing by and about Johnson, and full texts of much of his writing). His email is mailbox [at] nicholasjohnson.org.